WORKSHOP I – WET PLATE COLLODION 101

3 Days of instruction by James Weber.

Class Dates Available:

September 27th - 29th August, 2013.

Wet Plate Collodion photography is the second historical photographic process, and is one of the last remaining photographic arts where everything is a hand crafted chemical/darkroom process. In the class, we'll be making tintypes(on aluminum) and Ambrotypes(on glass). In an age where everything has gone digital, it's nice to get back in the darkroom.

Day 1, Sept. 27th: We'll cover a little history of wet plate, converting cameras, making chemistry, learning how to flow the plate with collodion, and practice shooting/developing/fixing/washing. Basically, we cover all the skills you need to get started doing this yourself.

Day 2, Sept. 28th: With the introduction of the skills you need covered in day 1, day 2 is more shooting, plus we'll cover the various studio lighting options that are available to you, their benefits and difficulties laid out.

Day 3, Sept 29th: On Day 3, the class takes a trip in James' RV, where we'll go on location to work on daylight shooting. For those students that bought the three day package, they get to shoot one mammoth plate, 20x24.

Our friend James Weber who when not shooting fashion and beauty, has become a serious Wet Plate photographer. And like every American he too wants things bigger. To achieve that James did a great deal of research and came up with the idea of using an "Indoor Grow Room" as a camera.

This was a combination of Profoto studio strobes at around 9600 Watt seconds and ARRI's for an additional 6000 watts. This allowed for exposure times between 9-12 seconds for an ISO of 1. Not the kind of process for the feint of heart or those whose idea of shooting is to hold down the button as if they were making a movie and pray that you got the shot.

Last week I was helping out a friend with his editorial fashion shoot that he shot using Wet Plate Collodian process; by recording it on video.

I used a Red Wing Boom as a camera jib in order to get a few more camera options which is something I've been meaning to try for sometime.

As you can see it was easy to do simply by adding some basic grip equipment that most photographers would usually have on hand in their studios.

I used a: Bogen super clamp, a Manfroto magic arm, a knuckle and a 6" wall plate which I had previously drilled and tapped and attached to my Cannon HD video camera. Although anyone could just as easily use any combination of grip equipment to achieve the same thing rather than spending money on an additional piece of equipment just to perform jib movements.

For those wondering why I didn't just attach the magic arm to the end of the Boom pin by adding another knuckle, that because I use this same combination of grip as a steady cam set up so having a quick release option to from 1 to the other is a nice option.

This setup proved to work extremely well and afforded great stability; and also because the boom was on a rolling stand it allowed me to move around the studio and change elevation in nice smooth motions. A short edit of the video from this shoot will be posted in the coming days.

My friend James Weber has been itching to play with large format photography for some time.

Recently he went way back to the beginning of large format photography and has gotten into Wet Plate Collodion.

I’ve been a professional photographer for around 18 years now. In that time, I dedicated 6 wonderful years in the U.S. Navy as a photographer. This is truly where I fell in love with photography as a process and an art. Back then, it was all film. Black & white, color, darkrooms, chemicals..it was crusty and dirty, but it was fun!

The processes were harder to do, but really satisfying when it was done right. When I was in the darkroom and I saw the image coming up from a print in the developer, it really was magical.

"All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth." - Richard Avedon - 1984

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Alva Edison

"Any photographer who says he’s not a voyeur is either stupid or a liar." - Helmut Newton

"You don’t have to sort of enhance reality. There is nothing stranger than truth." - Annie Leibovitz

"When you find yourself beginning to feel a bond between yourself and the people you photograph, when you laugh and cry with their laughter and tears, you will know you are on the right track." - Weegee

"The camera is much more than a recording apparatus. It is a medium via which messages reach us from another world." - Orson Welles

"Some people's photography is an art. Not mine. Art is a dirty word in photography. All this fine art crap is killing it already." - Helmut Newton

"Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more. " - Nikola Tesla

"I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable." - Richard Avedon

"The first 10 000 shots are the worst." - Helmut Newton

“If I have any ‘message’ worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.” – Edward Weston

"Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning." - Mahatma Gandhi

"Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man." - Edward Weston

"If you want reality take the bus." - David LaChapelle

"You don't take a photograph, you make it." - Ansel Adams

"When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I’m human. It’s the same thing when I’m behind a camera. I forget I exist." - Robert Mapplethorpe

"Great photography is always on the edge of failure." - Garry Winogrand

"I don’t think photography has anything remotely to do with the brain. It has to do with eye appeal." - Horst P. Horst

"Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn't look like somebody else's work." - William Klein

"Avedon claims to have been the best photographer in the '60s - bullshit - Bob Richardson was - despite or because of being insane and strung out on drugs, I managed to do photographs that are considered iconic - being known as the 'photographer's photographer' means I lead and they follow - I'm broke and they are rich." - Bob Richardson